Lethal Rocket Fuel Travels on L.A. Freeways

Extremely poisonous rocket fuel that could cause massive fatalities in an accidental spill is being routinely shipped by the U.S. military through some of the most densely populated areas of metropolitan Los Angeles, despite federal regulations requiring that such areas be avoided whenever practical.

The volatile chemical, destined for Vandenberg Air Force Base near Lompoc, is trucked through the San Gabriel Valley, across Pasadena, Glendale and Burbank, and then into the San Fernando Valley over U.S. 101, the nation’s most congested freeway. Los Angeles officials who would have to deal with any emergency say they have not been formally notified of the shipments.

Toxic Gas Cloud

As a result, they might be hard-pressed to evacuate motorists and nearby residents from the toxic gas cloud that could be spread by an accidental leak of the fuel, nitrogen tetroxide, a chemical whose fumes may be fatal if inhaled.

“What we have is a major breakdown in communications and in common sense,” said Rep. Cardiss Collins (D-Ill.), whose House Governmental Operations subcommittee plans hearings on the issue later this month. “Clearly, something has got to change before a real tragedy occurs.”

Instead of using the congested San Fernando Valley corridor, critics say, the Air Force could ship the volatile chemical through the desert, far to the north of Los Angeles. But the two federal agencies in charge of the shipments--the Defense and Transportation departments--insist that the current route is safe.

Truckers under contract to the Air Force now follow the San Bernardino Freeway (Interstate 10), Interstate 210 through Pasadena, and Highway 134 across Glendale and Burbank to the Ventura Freeway (U.S. 101), which they take through the San Fernando Valley, Ventura and Santa Barbara and finally on into Vandenberg. Federal officials say they carefully monitor nitrogen tetroxide shipments along these freeways.

However, only relatively large shipments are subject to this special control. The Air Force, taking advantage of a loophole in state law regulating the shipment of explosive materials, gives truckers carte blanche to carry smaller loads of the poisonous chemical over routes of their own choice, without regard for other safety precautions.

Parked Overnight

Thus, drivers carrying a load of nitrogen tetroxide earlier this month parked their rig overnight in an Oxnard storage yard, drove it the next day to a Ventura apartment and then stopped for fuel at a local service station before arriving at Vandenberg. The Air Force told concerned Ventura County officials that the shipment was perfectly legal.

Military spokesmen stress that they have taken elaborate precautions to protect the public in the event of a spill. Gilbert Noriega, an Air Force transportation specialist, said the shipments employ “state-of-the-art” trucking equipment and specially trained drivers.

“The Air Force has been shipping nitrogen tetroxide for over 20 years without an accident or incident regarding product loss,” Noriega said.

Others are skeptical.

“All it takes is one catastrophe and that argument is meaningless,” said Rep. Henry A. Waxman (D-Los Angeles), chairman of the health and environment subcommittee of the House Energy and Environment Committee. “Here we have a situation where millions of people could conceivably be at risk.”

Ambiguously Worded

The nitrogen tetroxide controversy shows that federal laws governing the transport of hazardous chemicals are ambiguously worded and erratically enforced, according to members of Congress, California officials and private experts.

In evaluating the routes for hazardous shipments, for example, the Transportation Department is governed by a 1939 law that says shippers must, if practical, avoid “heavily populated areas,” places where crowds assemble, narrow streets and alleys.

“Clearly, more precise language is needed,” said Fred Millar, a hazardous materials expert with the Environmental Policy Institute in Washington. “The law we’ve got is subject to different interpretations. It can be easily abused or overlooked.”

Another Weak Point

Another weak point in the system, Waxman said, is the discretion enjoyed by the Transportation Department in approving a proposed route. In the case of nitrogen tetroxide, he said, the Transportation Department made an “ad hoc decision” to ask the Air Force for information justifying its route--but there was no legal requirement that it do so.

Federal laws should be changed to require that local officials be notified when nitrogen tetroxide and other hazardous chemicals are moving through their communities, Waxman said. Currently, the government is required only to notify cities and counties about shipments of nuclear materials.

Nitrogen tetroxide, just one of many hazardous materials being shipped by the military and private companies over the nation’s highways, has undisputed military value. The odorless, yellow-brown liquid, which is used by Titan missiles and the space shuttle program and is designated for use in the “Star Wars” program, oxidizes rocket propellants to ignite missiles and is a key alternative to solid rocket fuels, space shuttle officials say.

The Defense Department estimates that in the next eight years there will be 130 shipments of nitrogen tetroxide and hydrazine, a related fuel, to Vandenberg.

More than 392,410 pounds of the chemicals were shipped to the California base in 1984, and 776,858 pounds in 1985, according to military reports. The Air Force has declined to say how many truckloads that amounts to, nor has it released any figures for 1986.

As the shipments continue, critics say, the risks increase.

Studies by the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory have shown, for example, that nitrogen tetroxide can pose a major health threat if large amounts are accidentally released. If the chemical spilled onto a crowded freeway, for example, some of it might vaporize into a toxic gas cloud that would require massive evacuations, according to the studies.

Evacuation Distances

The Transportation Department’s recommended evacuation distances for a nitrogen tetroxide spill call for a corridor eight-tenths of a mile downwind and four-tenths of a mile wide. Those distances exceed the government’s evacuation requirements for a similar spill of methyl isocyanate gas, a slower-spreading gas that caused massive fatalities in Bhopal, India.

Ron Hoopman, a research scientist at the Lawrence Livermore Laboratory, said people breathing the chemical initially might feel no pain. But within hours, he said, they could experience symptoms ranging from violent coughing, nausea and headaches to lung failure, heart attacks and death.

“This is an insidious substance,” Hoopman said. “You could walk away from an exposure and not know you’ve been injured. Then you’d go to bed and not wake up the next morning.”

The nitrogen tetroxide controversy surfaced earlier this year when researchers for Collins’ subcommittee learned that the Transportation Department had renewed an Air Force permit to ship the chemical in 3,000-gallon tank trucks to Vandenberg and other sites.

For safety reasons, the Transportation Department must grant special permits to shippers who seek to move more than 120 gallons of nitrogen tetroxide at a time. As the space shuttle and Titan 3 and 4 missile programs began accelerating in 1980, the Air Force needed to transport larger amounts of the chemical from Little Rock Air Force Base in Arkansas and the Vertak Chemical Corp. in Vicksburg, Miss., where the fuel is manufactured.

Transportation Department officials had granted approval routinely for such trips in the past. But last year, they said, they asked military officials to submit data comparing the safety of the California leg of the trip--particularly the Los Angeles segment--to alternative routes.

Although the resulting Air Force report lacked information about the safety of the Los Angeles route, the Transportation Department approved the application, allowing shipments of nitrogen tetroxide to continue through March, 1988.

Jim Osteen, a Transportation Department specialist in hazardous materials, said the Air Force’s failure to provide key information did not justify denying the application.

“You have to put this in context, . . . “ Osteen added. “Routing is only one element in providing safety, and in many cases it’s not the important element.”

Osteen, who said he is not familiar with driving conditions on U.S. 101 in Los Angeles, explained that shippers prefer to use large interstate freeways and avoid the stop-and-go traffic on smaller, undivided roads.

Obeying Law

Air Force officials, asked why they had chosen a route through Los Angeles, said they had taken safety factors into account and were obeying federal law. They noted, for example, that truckers routinely notify Vandenberg AFB six hours before their arrival, and that the information is then relayed to Ventura County fire officials. They added that the stainless steel tank trucks carrying the rocket fuel bear signs reading “poison gas,” “oxidizer” and “inhalation hazard.”

“We are in compliance with those sections of the regulations that say to the maximum extent possible . . . you use the route that avoids places where people congregate or assemble,” Noriega said.

In Los Angeles, state and local officials said they have not focused on the nitrogen tetroxide issue, chiefly because they do not know much about it.

Ken Rosenburg, a California Highway Patrol spokesmen in the San Fernando Valley, said his agency would play the lead role in responding to a chemical accident on the freeways but is not routinely informed about the Air Force shipments.

“We don’t get much of that stuff coming through here, to my knowledge,” he said.

Steven Tekosky, who supervises the environmental law section in the Los Angeles city attorney’s office, added: “We haven’t looked at it . . . it hasn’t come up. Basically, I’m unaware of any military shipments going through the city of Los Angeles.”

However, other Southern California officials have tried to change the route of the nitrogen tetroxide shipments. In Ventura County, for example, Assistant Fire Marshal Gary Girod said the route now in use amounts to a “disaster waiting to happen.”

When Girod learned about the chemical shipments several years ago, he said, the Air Force could ship nitrogen tetroxide anywhere in California with few restrictions. “(Truckers) could pull off the road, park overnight in a heavily populated area, stop for lunch at Denny’s . . . anything they chose to do,” Girod said.

The Ventura fire official helped draft legislation, which became law four years ago, that restricted nitrogen tetroxide shipments to five so-called “explosive routes” for ammunition and other explosive materials and also governed where truckers hauling the chemical could stop.

The current shipments through Los Angeles follow one of the designated explosive routes, but California Highway Patrol officials point out that the Air Force could have chosen any of four routes that bypass the city.

Of even greater concern, Girod said, is the apparent loophole in the state law that permits the Air Force to ship smaller amounts of nitrogen tetroxide with virtually no regulation. Currently, the statute covers shipments of the chemical in “cargo tanks,” or large trucks that can carry up to 40,000 pounds of the chemical.

However, Air Force officials say the law does not apply to smaller “tanks,” which also carry the chemical through Los Angeles. Bob Demmy, a hazardous materiel specialist at Kelly Air Force Base in San Antonio, said there is no prohibition on such shipments stopping en route, as happened in the Oxnard incident earlier this month.

‘A Loophole’

“That is a loophole in the state law which should be changed,” Girod said. “The intent of our law was never to have such dangerous chemicals parked overnight in a truck yard or parked in front of a residence in a busy city.”

As the shipments continue, Girod questions how well state and local officials could handle a major nitrogen tetroxide spill on U.S. 101. “You don’t just go into the middle of Los Angeles and evacuate an area four-tenths of a mile wide and eight-tenths of a mile long,” he said.

” . . . And what about all those cars that might be stacked up behind a truck on the freeway? Nobody seems to give a thought to those cars. How are they going to be evacuated?”

The alternative route that Girod has proposed would have truckers use Interstate 40 to Barstow and then follow Highways 58, 14 and 138 to Interstate 5 (over the Grapevine) and Highways 166 and 135 into Vandenberg.

Trucking industry officials believe freeways are safer than two-lane highways. But Girod said his route also offers safe, reliable roads and would take drivers only 90 minutes out of their way.

“They may hit a stop sign here and there,” he said, “but has anyone ever traveled on U.S. 101 in Los Angeles and not hit a traffic jam day or night? If somebody ever hits the rear of those trucks and punctures them, we have a disaster on our hands.”